Nuggets HC Mike Malone believes this will be the ‘toughest championship ever’
Denver Nuggets head coach Mike Malone is spot on with his perspective of the NBA’s return-to-play.
Don’t count Denver Nuggets head coach Mike Malone as one of those people that whoever wins the 2020 NBA Championship will need to have an asterisk by their name, which is usually an indication that circumstances allowed the winner of the Larry O’Brien trophy to have an easier path to the championship than they should have.
In fact, Malone believes that the rules set in place for the league to resume the 2019-20 season make it tougher than it’s ever been.
Per ESPN’s Ohm Youngmisuk, Malone says that “if you are able to go into a bubble and be isolated from your friends and family, to have no home-court advantage, to have a league interruption of four months and you are able to spend 90 days and come out of there a champion, I think this will be the toughest championship ever won.”
CBS4’s Romi Bean adds that Malone believes that “It will be a remarkable accomplishment and true test of both mental and physical fortitude.”
There’s certainly merit to Malone’s perspective, as there isn’t a season in sports history where one can re-call an absolute lack of home-court advantage, a four month in-season layoff between games and complete isolation from friends and family members for 90 days. Each one of those circumstances alone would make a championship run more difficult than ever but having all three of them hurled at you at once? The ability to emerge from that chaos as the league championship would undoubtedly be a testament to a team’s mental and physical strength.
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Home-court advantage has been known to swing games with crowds getting behind their favorite team and helping to shift the momentum with the volume of their cheers and their emotional intensity. The type of volume that could make it hard for an opposing team to communicate to one another or simply get in their heads at a clutch moment.
Not having an intimate circle of friends and family to lean on after a tough game, or when you enter a tough series and you need to find ways to relax your mind will also make it tougher for players.
Lastly, the NBA’s long layoff means that players aren’t in playing condition for a sport that requires elite physical endurance and that whatever rhythm they’ve built as a team or individually is at risk.
Fortunately for all of the teams invited to play in Orlando, they’re all in the same boat and so there’s no team that will have an advantage over the other because of it. Nonetheless, in a vacuum, a deep run in the 2020 NBA Playoffs will be anything but a cakewalk.
For Malone, the unprecedented nature of the NBA’s return-to-play and the challenges that come with it are going to force him to find out how he “can keep the group together and how I can keep a very positive, fun atmosphere. Because this will be challenge for all of us.”
As a relatively young team, that challenge could be harder for the Nuggets than most teams but the group that Malone has is full of level-headed and mature players as well. So it may not be too tough of a challenge for the longtime coach.
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Only time will tell how Denver fares for the remainder of the 2019-20 season but if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that if there’s any asterisk on the season, it should be one that signifies the challenge of the return-to-play. Not the imagined ease of the path to the championship.